I Love Daffodils!
- flora183
- Mar 14
- 2 min read
You’ve made it through the winter and there’s a fanfare from the verges; “spring is here” the golden hordes trumpet. As well as being my birthday month with lots of lovely feasts like Mother’s Day and often Easter, March is also a time of blustery unpredictability – hail one minute, sunshine the next, frosty mornings warming into t-shirt weather by lunchtime – and the coming of the light.
I knew I needed to marry my now husband when he told me what the daffodils say; “Oi! Oi! Look over ‘ere – it’s spring!” Of course I knew they were shouting something. I just didn’t know what and here was a man who actually spoke daffodil! The perfect partner for a daffodil lover.
They really are my favourite flower, not just because of their cheery optimism, standing proud in the driving sleet while other flowers are still sleeping in their buds, but because of what they signify – the equinox. For me, the problem with winter isn’t the cold, but the darkness and the dreary grey skies (yes, we get them in summer here in the UK but they’re not so prolonged and prevalent as in winter). Daffodils herald the lighter evenings and more time to spend in the garden.
The other good thing about them is that, unlike so many of our garden plants these days, they’re native to the UK. They also have a really cool Latin name; Narcissus pseudonarcissus. There are literally hundreds of different varieties of cultivated daffodils also with wonderful names redolent of the proud Victorian and Edwardian gardeners who coaxed them into existence – King Alfred, Albert Cooper, Mrs William Copeland. There are so many different varieties that some have ‘disappeared’ and the Royal Horticultural Society has initiated a hunt for living examples https://www.plantheritage.org.uk/news/national/rhs-asks-public-to-help-map-uk-s-daffodils-and-find-rare-pink-white-and-bonfire-yellow-varieties/ -
But you don’t need to go hunting. Just grab a couple of £1 bunches from your local supermarket, throw them in a vase and you’ll have your own personal fanfare in your kitchen for a week!
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